This great article in Quartz discusses the way a Canadian operation of the engineering giant GE has implemented ‘Holacracy’, a posh way of saying that teams themselves decide how to reach the company’s goals. The logic is simple: nobody is better equipped with the vision to solve practical problems than the teams themselves. Holacracy doesn’t work for everyone (as ever, no strategy works for everyone), but at A2B, we have always maintained that the best route to efficiency is to leverage the latent talent and goodwill of employees, and there’s no better way to encourage that goodwill than to bother …

So the people of Britain have pushed the nuclear button on our relationship with Europe. As the analysts (and financial tipsters) pick their jaws up off the floor, let’s examine the effect on the major infrastructure and construction industries. The chances of a Scottish block or a second referendum for England are extremely low, but there’s a big difference between complete disengagement and an arms-length relationship. There is therefore plenty of uncertainty: Right to play: Our right to bid to participate in projects depends on the nature of our new relationship. If we remain in the EEA and still play …

The executive pay gap is at unprecedented levels. In the 1970s, pay in the C-Suite was at 10-30 times shop-floor levels. In 2015, it’s not unusual for top execs to earn 200+ times the pay of their workers in the engine room. And according to the CIPD, this is affecting employee motivation. They say that executive pay is at crisis point, not only because of the disparity, but also because there appears to be no link between pay and performance. Endless stories in an avid media of the top table with their mouths in the trough, or public sector leaders leaving their …

Here’s an interesting article from Jon Tudor, reporting on an employee engagement event he recently ran. To summarise, the headline comment from his delegates was: “I wish my board was here, they need to learn and understand this”. Why don’t board-level managers seem to take an interest in employee engagement? After all, they take plenty of interest in change management and transformational programmes. How can employee engagement rise up the agenda? Here are some thoughts on the problem, and some possible solutions: Engagement is a new discipline, and sometimes nobody owns it. A few forward-thinking tech businesses have Chief Engagement Officers, but they’re …

What happened to ‘jobs for life’? Why do some employees want sabbaticals to go travelling while others crave security? Why don’t companies seem to think further than three months ahead? At A2B Excellence, our work on major projects always starts with the people on the team; and this has led us to understand the motivations of a rapidly changing workforce in a rapidly changing world. This is the presentation that Drew Barritt and Cari Hewer of A2B Excellence first gave at the Yong Rail Professionals meeting in September 2015; we have put it in video form for you here.

This extraordinary article from CIPD suggests that, even though a bad recruitment decision can cost upward of £300,000, plenty of businesses are tying their hands behind their own backs with poorly defined job descriptions. It’s no surprise: we have all heard of the manager or entrepreneur who hires in their own image: recruiting “another me”. And then there’s the problem of line managerial weakness. As the grey-hairs take retirement and breadth of experience becomes ever harder to find in companies which have long since stripped any spare talent from their operations, many middle managers have very little practical experience outside their day-to-day …

An intriguing set of recent surveys from top business analysts has lifted the lid on what effective leaders do – and, indeed, how sometimes they are scuppered in their ambitions. We don’t really have a matching term for the American ‘C-Suite’; and that’s a shame, because the C-Suite doesn’t quite match the idea of a British ‘board’. The C-Suite is designed around the idea of responsibility rather than role, so it rightly includes senior civil servants, functional experts (even when sometimes they are non-executive) – all the people who fundamentally need to shoulder management burden, whether they are credited with it or not. Analysts …